PML-N candidates Salim Zia, Nehal Hashmi, Rahila Magsi and Iqbal Zafar Jhagra get their votes transferred to Punjab overnight and the very next day all their names appear on PML’s list of candidates for senate

How amazingly brilliant of Election Commission of Pakistan to oblige the PML 20 days after the announcement of the election schedule – bypassing all rules under the garb approval obtained from “competent authority”

“On February 10, almost 20 days after the election schedule was announced, got issued letter No F 3(2)/2014-Cord with a title “Immediate By UMS/Fax”, conveying to the ROs and CECs of all the four provinces that the approval had been obtained from the “competent authority” under which the “provisions of Section 20 of the Electoral Rolls Act, 1974 are not applicable to election programme issued by ECP”. The letter also directed the authorities to “proceed in the matter (registration/transfer of votes) under intimation to the commission”. – shared by Awab Alvi on Facebook

“These are the most important elections in the history of country, this will determine the destiny of Pakistan” said different politician and pundits before elections. Unfortunately, the post election debate which should have been focused on its results and its policy implication on Pakistan’s future is surrounded by rigging allegations by every party (PML in Sindh, JUI-F in KPK, Nationalist in Baluchistan and Sindh, PTI in Punjab, PPP in Punjab and other provinces, JI in Karachi etc.)

So much have been written and shown on TV however ECP is convinced that these were free and fair elections. As a business student I did some analysis on election results of ten seats in Lahore (NA-118 to NA-127).

Total number of register voters in most of these ten national assembly seats have no difference with the total number of register voters in their respective provincial assembly seats except in three constituencies (NA-123, NA-124 & NA-126). Number of registered voters in these NA constituencies is greater than their respective provincial seats (68, 2590, 150 respectively). However, unfortunately there is not a single constituency where total number of votes polled for NA is equal to its respective provincial seats. Difference ranges from minus 7055 (Votes polled on respective pp seats are more than that of NA seat) to positive 2841 (Votes polled on NA seat is more than its respective provincial seats). Though the total number of votes polled on most of NA seats were more than their respective PP seats except in case of NA-125 and NA-127, where total votes polled at NA are less than their respective PP seats (4600 and 7055 respectively). Every voter polls two votes, one for NA seat and other one for provincial seat; it means total number of votes polled in NA should be equal to their respective provincial assembly seats. How is this possible a person voted for provincial candidates but not for NA candidates and vice versa? I think ECP is in the best position to answer this question.Continue reading “Another rigged election?” »

PML has been chest thumping a logic that if you vote for PTI you actually help elect PPP into power – a major fallacy being played up in the desperate greed to be in power

The results of By-Election clearly conclude that PPP+PML-Q alliance will be nowhere in the next general elections and its now more of battle between PTI vs PML-N or PTI vs all status quo parties, since PML must also be included into the status quo cluster proudly claims credit for having Zardari Disaster rule Pakistan for FIVE years

NA-162 (Chica Watni):

In Election 2008: PPP get 68,000 votes, No PML-Q candidate.

In By Election 2012: PPP+PML-Q joint candidate got 20,000 votes only.

PP-26 (Jehlum):

In Election 2008: PPP candidate+PML-Q candidate got 27,500 votes.

In By Election 2012: PPP+PML-Q joint candidate got 15,000 votes only.

PP-92 (Gujranwala):

In Election 2008: PPP candidate+PML-Q candidate got 30,000 votes

In By Election 2012: PPP+PML-Q joint candidate got 16,000 votes only.

PP-122 (Sialkot):

In Election 2008: PPP candidate+PML-Q candidate got 20,000 votes

In By Election 2012: PPP+PML-Q joint candidate got 4097 votes only.

PP-133 (Narowal):

In Election 2008: PPP candidate+PML-Q candidate got 44,000 votes

In By Election 2012: PPP+PML-Q joint candidate got 22,500 votes only

The bottom-line is PPP is down in Punjab, and the election battle in the upcoming battle is PTI vs PML-N and then its peoples choice to decide if Pakistan needs to change from all these rulers who have destroyed Pakistan to such a horrid situation – shared on Facebook via Awab Alvi

A look into the sordid state of Health Care Delivery Systems in Pakistan; Deaths from the so-called “P.I.C Syndrome”; How it has shaken our trust in the pills we buy and the leaders we “TRY” !

On Dec 15, 2011, 56-year old Abdul Ghaffur (AG) reported to Mayo Hospital Lahore with bleeding from his nose. AG was a known patient of Diabetes and also Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD), a condition that leads to heart attack if not managed continually for life. Although he didn’t complain of fever or body aches, and the cold weather didn’t suggest Dengue Fever, yet his Dengue Serology was sent as the City had just three months back recovered from the worst Dengue Endemic. What the Mayo doctors didn’t know was that scores of patients with similar complaints were presenting at all other major tertiary care hospitals Jinnah, Allama Iqbal, Ganga Raam, and Lahore General Hospital. It was a trailer of what was to come in the running month, hordes of heart patients with bleeding from nose, in stools and in vomits, rashes, and various grades and types of skin darkening reported to the Emergency Rooms of the above facilities.

What set these patients from Dengue sufferers was the absence of fever and an abnormally cold spell that was unfavorable to any Aedes Aegypti larval growth. And what bound them was their P.I.C cards and the common illnesses for which they received free medicines from P.I.C. AG’s Dengue Test turned up negative and it took the most skilled Physicians at Mayo almost 19 days (4th Jan, 2012) to realize that AG’s bone marrow(BM) had shut down and he had a mysterious darkening if his face and limbs. By 11th Jan, 2012 a one-off inter-hospital coordination established that all 465 patients belonged to P.I.C. AG died on 15th Jan, 2012 despite the best available care. His White Blood Cells_ the cavalry of human body’s defence against any bug entering it had fallen too low after the BM stopped making them and his Diabetes had further weakened his ability to fight the massive infections that ultimately took his life.

By Jan 26th, 2012 seventy-nine of the ‘465’ patients died. By 2nd Feb, 2012, the count had soared to 130 odd. Almost all of the dead dying because their old age, weakened defences and a bone marrow that failed to regain its functions despite treatment, made fighting the subsequent infections impossible with antibiotics alone. Even today, despite the Royal Free Hospitals’ (Britian) suggested treatment (Leucovorin/Folinic Acid) few more lost their life…

So was the Anti-Malarial Drug, Pyrimethamine the real bugaboo behind this massacre? (as suggested by the Britians’ Medicine & Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) preliminary findings). Does it explain all the complaints these patients presented with at hospitals or is something else at play? How can our health care professionals miss the classic presentations of Pyrimethamine Toxicity if the patients only suffered its excessive dosing?Continue reading “The Debackle that Sucked the Marrow of Life” »

An election is taking place in Faisalabad for Punjab Assembly today. There are three more bye elections in other areas of Punjab. All are taking place after the resignations of the members of parliament due to their fake degrees of graduation submitted to Election Commission during the 2008 general election. It took two years before the Supreme Court took up the cases and several of these accused opted to resign instead of fighting their cases.

Two of those who resigned are contesting again. A natural division of these two is shared by the two parties of the rich, the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz. Ajmal Asif contesting from Faisalabad is from PMLN and Jamshed Dasti from PPP. Both of them are allowed by the courts to contest against. What a mockery of the justice. They resigned from their seats because they had cheated the Election Commission and the people in general. The cheaters are contesting again because at present the condition for the illegibility of a candidate to be a graduate is gone.

This is just one aspect of these bye elections. The elections are contested every where with full state sponsorship of the candidates from the respective governing political parties. The rich candidates are violating all the code of conduct that Election Commission has laid down for candidates before the elections.Continue reading “An Election Pretense” »

It was only matter of time before PML(N) would have capitulated to the name Pakhtunkwa. PML(N) knew it, ANP knew it, and the rest of the parties knew it as well; the outcry was all part of the political point scoring. Initially refusing to accept pakhtunkwa was form of point scoring by PML(N), it was making sure that the clear message was being sent to the people for whom it supposedly refused to accept the name in the first place. There was similar outcry when Shahbz Shairf begged Taliban to spare Punjab. The potential audiences got just the right message in these two situation– PML(N) voting base, despite loud protests by some.

All the provinces in Pakistan are not close to being homogeneous, but at the same time they have the name of certain linguistic or ethnic group residing in that province. Balochis are about 55% of Balochistan’s population, but the province is called Balochistan. Sindhish are about 59% of Sindh’s population, but the province is called Sindh. Punjabi are 75% of Punjab’s population–that is if one doesn’t count Seriakis’ as ethnic Punjabis, but the province is called Punjab. The similar is true for pakhtunkwa, Pakhtuns are between 65% to 75% of the province’s population, depending on who you believe, the estimates vary–in this sense people of pakhtunkwa rightly demand their province to be named after Pakhtuns, the majority ethnic group in the province.Continue reading “PML-(N) leverages Pakhtunkwa debate for Votes in Hazara” »

Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was sent to live with a Bedouin family soon after his birth; Bedouins were thought to be the pure speaker of Arabic language, while people living in urban center of Mecca were considered too cosmopolitan, and it was felt that language spoken in Mecca was corrupted. It is astonishing how much the ancient Arabs cared about the pureness of their language, and the effort they put into their kids learning the pure form of language.

If we look into the situation of present day Punjabi, it is facing similar sort of problem. The only people who truly speak close to genuinely pure Punjabi are the ones mostly residing in the rural areas of the Province. If you belong to cosmopolitan city of Lahore, it is very likely that either you don’t speak the language at all–even if you do speak it, it is corrupted. The requirement to speaking pure Punjabi is that you should have no education whatsoever. This is because all the education is either in Urdu or English. As literacy increases further, the future of Punjabi becomes doubtful.

The trick to completely wiping out a language, no matter how powerful, is stop any kind of written communication in it; it will slowly die off. This is precisely what’s happening with Punjabi in Punjab. There is no written communication in it whatsoever.Continue reading “The Future of Punjabi” »

“A very unpleasant incident of Muslim Christian’s riots took place in Gojra, a place near Faisalabad, on Friday, 31st July 2009. Seven people were killed and several injured while 40 houses were set ablaze. Indeed maximum condemnation of this incident becomes insufficient as it was the duty of Islamic state [of Pakistan] to protect the lives and properties of Non-Muslim citizen of the state.” This is the intro of article by Maulana Saeed Ahmed Jalapuri, Ameer Almi Majlis-e-Tahfuz-e- Khatam-e-Nabuat Karachi which he gave me for reading before the interview. Both the English and Urdu version of article “Saniha-e-Gojra, Pase Parda Muharekat”will be published on my blog soon inshaAllah.

After reading the intro of article, I cut short the list of my questions and asked who has committed this heinous crime? Is there any hand of Khatam-e-Nabuat in this incident?

Maulana Saeed smiled despite my blunt questions and replied: “Islam doesn’t allow any individual or group to take law in his hand. We can’t tolerate that our worker would take law in his hand. Khatam-e-Nabuat doesn’t believe in fanaticism. We have a long list of martyrs but you can’t name a single killer in our ranks. We haven’t killed a single Qadiani even, leave alone the Christians. We are struggling in the frame work of the state Law and will keep our struggle continued peaceful. We have neither taken law in our hand nor will we do in future.”Continue reading “Interview with Leader of Khatm-e-Nabuwwat Maulana Saeed Jalapuri about Gojra Killings” »

The curse of religious fanaticism has struck once again. Not in the beautiful valleys of N.W.F.P but in Gojra, the heartland of industrial Punjab. This was not the work of a foreign funded militant group or a separatist movement. It was actually the result of propagating religious chauvinism, intolerance of diverse communities, distorting history, glorifying the use of force and promoting obedience and militancy in the past three decades as state policy and as an integral part of our curriculum.

Mukhtar Masih from Gojra is the caretaker of my maternal family’s home in Karachi since 1977. He was hired by my grandmother as a cook and today his son and his family also live in Karachi. Like other migrants to the cosmopolitan, he had supported his younger siblings and had steadily built a house at Gojra. Mukhtar spent sleepless nights last weekend when his locality of Christian Colony was looted and burned. His younger brother, Javed Masih, a sanitary worker in Civil Hospital Gojra for the past 17 years narrated the following accounts to the writer.

Javed mentioned that the episode began at a Christian wedding in the nearby village of Korian on Thursday evening, July 29th, 2009. He said that people were throwing money at the bride groom’s wedding party but later neighbors alleged that torn pages of the Qur’an were used to shower the party as well. Javed questioned how was it possible for people to use pages from a holy book at a wedding reception? Why would anyone in their right mind do such a thing? It has now been learned that children had unknowingly cut pages of an old Islamic Studies textbook to use as shreds to shower on the wedding party. Those who had initially raised the claim of desecration were satisfied the next day when it was proven that illiterate street kids were responsible for unintentionally tearing a textbook, not the holy Qur’an.Continue reading “An Eyewitness Account from Gojra” »

Bishop Ijaz Inayat from the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Karachi shares an email with the latest update on the tragic incident which left 9 people dead in Gojra, this is more as a follow up to his earlier report that we published on 2nd of August

According to latest news five terrorist considered to be member of the core group which conspired the burning of Christians and their house in Gojra and Korian have been arrested.

These arrests were done from Sindh and Frontier provinces. In this barbaric incident over forty houses were burnt to ashes and over hundred and twenty looted, killing nine including women and children burnt alive.

A meeting was called in local Church to discuss the incident of Gojra. A notable number of 20 Muslim/Christian leadership of Rawalpindi/Islamabad attended the meeting. Meeting was facilitated by Waheed Yousuf.

Fr Rahmat Hakam welcomed the participants for and thanks for their participation on a very short notice. All participants were asked to shared their feelings and suggestion on this incident and many of them addressed the participants including Mian Aslam ex MNA, Allama Inayat Shakir, Moulana Tanveer Ahmad Alvi, Mehboob Sada, Shamsul Haq Awan, Fr Rahmat Hakim, Fr Nadeem Kamran, Malik Ansar, Shafqat Aziz, Amjad Gulzar, Aamir Shehzad, James Jan, Younus Masih, Jamil Khokhar and Basharat. The minutes of the meeting are as follows

Facts of Gojra incidents were shared

Total Death toll is 8 persons, including women and children of one family, who were brunt alive.

87 houses were brunt or badly damage

150 families were forced to leave the area

It was also noted that administration of the Gojra took no step to protect the lives and properties of innocent Pakistanis.

In an email from Farooq Tariq a spokesperson of the Labor Party of Pakistan has explained how Islamic Religious group fanatics Khatim an-Nabuwwah have threatened their workers of dire circumstances for having sided with the Christian community during the Gojra riots which left approximately 9 people dead due to intensive burns.

Khatim an-Nabuwwah [Wikipedia] or finality of Prophethood, is an Islamic belief that prophethood came to an end after Muhammad. Many Muslims believe that the line of prophets sent by God ended with the advent of Muhammad, who they believe received the final revelation in the form of the Qur’an.

The concept of the finality of prophethood of Muhammad has caused controversy. The Ahmadiyya Community, hold Mirza Ghulam Ahmad to be a prophet subordinate to Muhammad. Ahmed claimed to be the Promised Messiah and Mahdi in 1889 and founded a movement in Qadian, India. His claims resulted in a violent reaction among many Muslims of the India subcontinent. The Salafi and Sunni scholars vehemently opposed him and in subsequent years a movement for the “protection of Khatme Nabuwwat” was founded. This movement, at times violent, is still very active in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries where Ahmadiyya adherents are present.

This Islamic fundamentalist group quote extreme about forcibly reinforcing the Blasphemy law in Pakistan, a law created more or less to outlaw the Ahmedi community in Pakistan. These Gojra riots need to be vehemently condemned and strict criminal action must be taken against these aggressors, it ironic that this organization has the audacity to hold a press conference and in turn is threatening other and also the Government to release their ‘muslim’ friends who were arrested by the police during the Gojra riots, its amazing how they have the balls to threaten after they themselves burnt alive 9 innocent peopleContinue reading “Khatim an-Nabuwwah Fanatics threaten Gojra Activists” »

Guest Blog by Brigadier Samson Simon Sharaf is a retired officer of Pakistan Army and a political economist.

The recent incidents in Gojra are a grim reminder of how existing half laws can be manipulated for personal and political ends. Besides loss of life, property or the reputation of the country, it also reflects an opportunist political system in which strange bedfellows can be espoused for political expediency and where rule of law can be applied selectively. Worse, it exposes false claims of the provincial and federal governments over constant surveillance of banned militant outfits in Punjab.

The entire trail from Jhang to Gojra, Mian Channu and Shantinagar is littered with similar incidents of religiously fanned hatred spearheaded by banned militant outfits. Time and again such incidents take place with impunity and remarkable alacrity. It is to question why the local administration is caught sleeping and why no preventive measures manifest themselves in pre emptive actions.

There is no doubt that the working relationship between the Federal Government and PMLN Government is dysfunctional. It took the Government of Punjab three days to move into a belated action despite warnings given by Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, the Federal Minister of Minorities Affairs. The provincial government dismissed the factual reporting of the federal minister for over two days and moved reluctantly after all the damage had been done and Faisalabad-Karachi Railway traffic blocked for two days. The Chief Minister has repeatedly postponed his visit to the city citing security reasons. Meanwhile the frustrations continue to grow resulting in resignations of one federal and one provincial minister.Continue reading “The Innocent of Gojra: Victims of the Half Law” »

A lot of detail has been published in the newspapers today. Brig. (R) Samson Sharaf of PTI visited Gojra yesterday and has met and interviewed a lot of people.

He informs us that the incident started at a wedding reception where there was some misbehaviour by a drunk person. On my query he said it was a Pakistani but on my insistence he just said that the person did not belong to the Christian community but of the majority religion in Pakistan. This person was, as courteously as possible in such a situation, escorted out.